


The Cupid Waltz

by uragani



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Domestic, F/M, No Dialogue, One Shot, Pre-Canon, Pre-War, Romance, Short, Stream of Consciousness, Unexpected Fatherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 14:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2028270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uragani/pseuds/uragani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A RED Spy, way before colors mattered, ended up in Boston. Carefree, with no idea his future would contain blood, wars, and masks, he meets a pretty little lady. Who he falls in line with like he'd always been there, much to the chorus of disgusted noises from the gaggle that came with her. Not that he didn't love them too. || The story of Spy falling for Scout's Ma, and then having to leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cupid Waltz

It began as the story that you told your kids one day about how you met. A young 26 year old man who was foreign, tall, dark, and handsome. A petite but charming woman with perfect hair, a short skirt, and a sweet smile in a hurry. Bumping into each other, that casual laugh, the flirtation, the smiles, the hand touching when he bends to pick up her fallen hanky, the instant little bond that flickers through and cements them together for better or worse. He asks her out for drinks, she accepts. He goes to his hotel beaming about his good luck, she returns to her 7 kids, paying the babysitter, and worrying about the money but cheering up when she sees each little love of her life and reminds herself she's allowed to have fun every once in a while. A good story, a great beginning.

She is not the cute little prim girl he thought he was about to have a movie romance with. This becomes violently clear on their first date when she drinks him under the table, and then laughs about it. The poor French man tries his hardest to remain as suave as ever, but she ends up carting him like a sack of potatoes to a taxi he managed to hail while they were laughing over how hard it was to keep him walking straight. He got a kiss, to his surprise, before she tucked him into the taxi and sent him home. He doesn't remember how he got into his hotel room when he wakes up the next day, but since he's not dead, or in an alley, he counts it as a win.

The second date's an accident. He sees her eating and sidles up to say hello only to trip over one ragamuffin, get howled at by a second, and sat on by a third when that one decides the best way to make the other two stop howling threats is to fill them. It makes her laugh through her scolding, so it's worth it to be laying in the dirt in his good suit. He's so surprised she has kids, but he's a little more surprised when he falls in love with them as quickly as he did her. They're all little shits, just outright, but that doesn't mean he doesn't fall right into position. He didn't want to call himself a father, he was in his twenties for goodness sake, he barely knew them. He had no right, but something in the rugrats had him dishing out sage comments, pestering them with affection, and swatting them upside the head when they were rude. They absorb him, a sort of mix of acknowledgment and completely ignoring he existed that made him just as happy to sit there and watch them, as it did when he was with her. They were all like her anyways. Spitfires the lot of them. What had he gotten into?

The third date did not involve a food fight, but it was a near thing. The fourth ended in him clutching his handkerchief to the bloody nose he'd gotten when he was ferociously headbutted over 'stealing' a candy. The fifth date he sleeps over, by the simple method of her bringing him home afterwards and leaving him to the pack until he goes to sleep on the couch without meaning to. He wakes up with ink on his face and he blames all of them blithely until they gang up on him again. But this time he doesn't end up bleeding, just laughing, and he gets cereal from a pretty lady, so he doesn't much mind. It turns out that a big part of romancing her is getting her kids to fall in love with you too, but that's no surprise to him in the least. He's quietly loving with them, this weird little part of him goes absolutely serene when he's among them and he knows the oldest has got an eye on that because he does the same thing. They both find a perch, to the side, and watch the others play. He likes it.

She does too, because she's forever asking how exactly he ended up one of the boys when she was supposed to be getting a pretty beau out of the deal. He laughs, and dips her for a kiss that is accompanied by several 'ew's in the background. He's a mortal enemy for the length of time it takes him to pay for them to go to a movie and leave them be. With an addition of cash for snacks, an unsteady truce is reached and they filter out of the house loudly. The couple end up curled on the couch together, him and his lady, just... enjoying the quiet. Companionable, fingers laced. There's no hurry to either of them, no need to plunge into the feverish necking that new couples so often do. They settle for just talking low and comparing their worldly views of the inconsequential instead. She coaxes him to talk in French, and he surprises her with Italian instead out of pique and there's nothing in this world that can stop that from going on for hours. He finally kisses her first for once, and it's heavy with contentment. He's figuring out he's in too deep.

Time passes, and the world starts giving them looks. The Cold War has turned into a media circus, with the two homegrown spies loudly commented on at every corner. They talk about their 'comrades' (the sneer implicit) from other countries and how more might be around. He doesn't pay attention at first, but it drills into him. The funny looks, the casual cruelties. He gets paranoid, and uncomfortable more and more as time passes leaving her worried for him. He hates that, hates worrying her or the kids, especially the one that looks at him like he knows everything. He wants to make them all happy, and he smooths everything over with a little white lie he speaks with his body and not his mouth. Compartmentalization. He could be paranoid when they weren't looking. They know better, but he's not giving anything up one way or another, and at least he isn't unhappy anymore. He'd be happy to know they thought so.

He knows secrets are a bad idea, and when did he get into a relationship that had those? When did he get into a relationship he thinks as he gazes at her in the morning light, curled in her bed with the contentment of a king. When had he fallen so deep with his petite chou fleur. (The first moment they laughed together he thinks, when he thinks of it later.) But secrets he keeps. He doesn't tell her when he starts getting roughed up a little when he heads out to help with chores, pay for some groceries, and get little gifts for the boys. He doesn't tell her when they start laying down threats, because they're empty and boastful. He doesn't tell any of them anything, because he can handle it. This is nothing compared to his history. This is nothing he can't solve with three seconds in an alley, with the click-click of a eager little knife. He doesn't tell anyone and he doesn't do anything. It's just because he doesn't fit in here with his accent and his suit, it'll pass.

One of them fucking touched her. A jostle, just grabbed her shoulder for a second and yanked. She had eyes like gimlets afterwards, said it wasn't anything big in that charming accent of hers, and brushed them off like trash. He was incensed. Absolutely furious, and no small amount of terrified. He was the cause, the stupid mongrel French man. The frog with one of their hometown girls, sneaking around and leaving his slime everywhere. He was the one dragging these bruisers down on the family. The boys could fight, yes, he'd helped here and there to drop in what he knew about the finer aspects of that sort of thing (and that's another secret wasn't it, how he got to know so much about where to kill a man.) but could they fight against men who would send other men? How long could they keep it up before someone dropped by and took them with bullets they couldn't punch? He didn't want to think about it. He knew he had to.

Loving her was the easiest thing he'd ever done, and leaving her was so much harder. The damn eldest, he can see it in his face he knows he's going to leave. (He doesn't know if it's paranoia, doesn't know if the kid actually knows. Years later he still never figured it out.) He loves them all, and kisses their foreheads goodbye and hugs them tight, even when they get huffy about it, or roll their eyes. He does it slow, over the course of a day. Never actually says goodbye to any of them, just makes excuses to hug them. Doesn't let them know it's more than him being as affectionate as always. He probably left that on them somewhere, an imprint of a quiet loving man who just had to go one day. He tells her he loves her. He thumbs over her cheek, and smiles his saddest smile just long enough for her to know. She doesn't wanna hear about it, she already knows he's made a decision.

He's gone the next day, leaving her a single rose. It's melodramatic and comes from half the movies he'd dragged her to, but he thought that was sort of the point. Maybe she kept it pressed in a bible somewhere, along with the birth certificates and the little things that kept a family heirloom packed with family. Maybe she threw it away rather than look at it. She's not sour, neither of them were. He told her he had to go, explained that things weren't safe for him here. She accepted it, dutifully. Not because she was a woman who accepted things that easily, but because she knew by the look in his eyes that keeping him there would put some kind of shutter against the light in them. She let him go because she knew that there had to be _something_ making him leave if he was leaving her and the boys. Something big, since he hinted that the spies to be executed were bothering him. Even she didn't fuck with international incidents.

So he missed her, and the boys, for many years. Many countries, and states, and towns. Many hours, and days. Many kills, and deaths, and contracts, and fights that had him half bleeding out. Missed them for his whole life really, no matter who or what he did inbetween. Missed them until he fell into a contract with a team called RED, and met a boy who had that... cute little snub nose of hers. That loud voice snarling in that beloved accent. Met a boy who had his eyes. And that was when he knew he really, really, screwed up.


End file.
